The Gift of Healing
by Maltheniel
Summary: At seven, Sirius rejected his family's pureblood ideals. At fifteen months, Harry was left with a family that hated magic. Both paid a high price, and at thirteen, they both ran away. This is the story of two abused boys and how they found healing.
1. Wounds

At seven, Sirius spent his first day among Muggles.

His cousin Andromeda was watching him and Regulus for the day, and she took them into Muggle London. Regulus was fussy most of the day and spent the rest of it demanding Andromeda "be a proper witch" and do things the magical way. Sirius, on the other hand, was fascinated, and when at the end of the day, Andromeda knelt before him and said quietly, "Muggles aren't really all that stupid, are they?" he agreed with her vehemently.

He had always had something of a rebellious streak, and this discovery that his parents just might be wrong in their pureblooded ideology gave him an actual reason to rebel.

If he had known just how much that rebellion would cost him, he might not have been so quick to jump aboard with Andromeda's ideas.

(On the other hand, years later he was to compare what had happened in his life, when he rebelled, with what had happened in Regulus's, when he went on being a good little pureblood, and he wasn't sorry he had rebelled at all.)

* * *

At seven, Harry accepted that his aunt and uncle were never going to love him.

He'd tried to be perfect, tried over and over again to do everything they had ever asked him to do, to avoid doing anything "freaky." Dudley never tried to do anything they asked and threw temper tantrums nearly every day, and Harry wondered why Dudley was praised continually while he was called "freak" and "boy" and told he didn't deserve to live with them. He tried harder, but nothing changed.

He'd forced himself to do poor work at school so he wouldn't be better than their precious Dudley. He'd watched as his aunt and uncle fawned over their fat son every time he got a passing grade, and he'd thought they might be pleased with the much better grades he got. Instead, he'd been scolded severely and told not to act like he was better than Dudley. He'd promptly dropped his grades – and been ignored entirely on school matters. He didn't dare try raising them again.

In spite of all that, he still longed for just one kind word, just one affectionate touch, just one acknowledgement that he had done something right. He still clung to the hope that the Dursleys might give that to him.

That day when he was seven, he somehow wound up on the roof when he was running away from Dudley's gang. When the teacher who informed his uncle had left, Uncle Vernon swung on him and gave him the scolding of his life. And then he hit him.

That night, in the cupboard, nursing his bruised cheek and broken lip and feeling the bruises on his arms where Uncle Vernon had gripped him as he shook him, he shoved his hope that the Dursleys could love him one day deep down inside himself and forgot about it.

(But he knew, on some deep, instinctual level, that he would never be able to stop hoping, not unless his one great dream came true and someone who did love him took him away from there.)

* * *

At ten, Sirius was ready to escape to Hogwarts.

His visit to Muggle London had piqued his interest, and he had spent a great deal of time since researching Muggles, Muggleborns, and halfbloods. He had come to the conclusion that the pureblood superiority was rubbish. It was not in his nature to conceal what he felt deeply, and his changed opinions had led to a great many clashes with his parents.

They had never loved him as much as they had loved Regulus, not even before his ideology changed. Regulus had always been the perfect pureblood son, while Sirius had always been a little too wild and carefree for them to truly love him. But after he began talking about the worth of those people the Blacks traditionally saw as scum, their treatment of him changed from a tendency to give him the cold shoulder to outright verbal abuse. His parents tried to corral him back into believing the "proper" way, but the insults they freely dished out to "mudbloods," to Sirius's views, and to Sirius himself, only served to confirm to Sirius that he was in the right.

It was when his mother began perfecting the whipping jinx on him, where she waved her wand and he felt as though a stinging blow had been delivered across his back, that he really began longing for Hogwarts.

(He knew, though, that once there his actions, freed temporarily from his parent's consequences, would probably cut him off from them altogether. And though he told himself he was tough and could survive on his own, without parents, a trembling little part of his heart cried out to be loved as his parents loved Regulus.)

* * *

At ten, Harry had learned how to cope.

He did all his chores and kept his grades lower than Dudley's; he kept his head down and called Uncle Vernon "sir" and gave him no obvious backtalk. But now it was not out of the aching desire for them to give him a little acceptance, never again; it was because he did not like being acquainted with the back of Uncle Vernon's hand. He was not afraid of his uncle, so he told himself, but he didn't like being hit in the least either.

So he muttered uncomplimentary, sarcastic comments about the Dursleys under his breath, when he knew they couldn't hear; he obeyed them, but only, he told himself, because he wanted to; he did his homework perfectly in the cupboard under the stairs and then dumbed it down before he turned it in. He distanced himself as much as he possibly could, and whenever they shot their denigrating comments at him, he let them roll off his back and outwardly showed them no heed.

(He never let on that every time they called him a freak, every time they said they wished he had died with his parents, every time they called him the son of ne'er-do-wells who didn't deserve to live, it drove the wounds carved deep inside him deeper. He never showed that he lay in his cupboard some nights and cried silently with the intangible, aching pain.)

* * *

At eleven, Sirius let himself be sorted into Gryffindor.

He'd met James Potter on the train, and they'd become friends instantly. James was everything he wished he could be – he was a pureblood, too, though Sirius knew that didn't matter; he was loved fervently by his parents; he thought Muggleborns and halfbloods were as good as he was and didn't pay any price for that belief. For some reason, though, Sirius didn't envy James, maybe because he was warm and outgoing and couldn't care less what Sirius's background was. James would be sorted into Gryffindor, Sirius could tell, because he had just that sort of attitude – the one that believed he could take life by the horns and come out jolly and unscathed.

(Sirius knew better, of course, but he wasn't going to tell James that. Not yet.)

So Sirius stood in line to be sorted and knew that his future hung on his choice. If he went into Slytherin like a good Black, he might someday have a chance of reconciling with his parents, maybe even being loved by them, but it would mean becoming a bigoted pureblood. If he let himself go into Gryffindor, he'd probably be with James, and he would have no pressure from those around him to be proud of his heritage – but he'd cut himself off completely from his family.

 _Well, well, well,_ the Hat said when it sat on his head. _You are a most interesting case. You could fit several places, of course, but you have the courage to stand up for what you know to be right and the nobility to go with it. I think Gryffindor would be just the place for you._

 _Not Slytherin?_ Sirius thought, because he couldn't quite give up the dream of reconciling yet.

The Hat was silent for a moment, and when it spoke, there was somehow a gentleness to its words, as if it hated having to dash his dreams. _You have no real ambition to speak of, and you are too straightforward to be cunning. I am afraid that is not the House for you._

 _Very well,_ Sirius thought, because he really didn't want to grow up a bigot. It was just hard to let go of his family.

 _I think you will find family in Gryffindor,_ the Hat told him gently, before it shouted to the Hall at large, "Gryffindor!"

Sirius was glad he had been sorted into Gryffindor afterwards and cursed himself for that moment of hesitation under the hat. James was swiftly becoming the brother he had never had, and for the first time in his life he was surrounded by people who believed what he did about bloodlines.

(There were moments, though, as he carelessly did well in his classes, that he knew his actions had cut himself off altogether from his family – moments when he was desperately afraid what his new direction would mean for him.)

* * *

At eleven, Harry discovered he was a wizard.

This clarified to him all the things he had done that he had never intended to do. He had a proper name for it now, and it was nice, very nice, to be able to insist to himself in his head that he was not a freak, he was a wizard. More than anything, though, the discovery gave him a way to escape before he grew up. He would finally be able to leave his relatives' house, live in a place where there were other freaks – wizards, he corrected desperately – learn how to control the powers he hadn't even begun to understand yet.

(He knew boarding school would never be able to fulfill his longing for a home, that teachers would never equal parents. He told himself it didn't matter, as long as he didn't have to be despised by everyone there.)

He was sorted into Gryffindor, mostly because he knew Malfoy was a bully, and the last thing he wanted was to live with bullies here when he had just escaped them. And Hogwarts was magnificent, and it was wonderful not being looked down on every time he did something freaky – magical, that was. No one despised him here except Professor Snape, and Harry quickly started hating Snape with a passion, because he had just gotten away from being hated into a world that accepted him, and Snape just brought all that hate back into his mind. It was hard not to flash back to being at the Dursleys around him.

But in spite of the immense relief that being in the magical world was, in spite of the fact that he knew he wasn't a freak now, the image from that summer that stayed burned in his mind was Uncle Vernon's threat.

The beefy man had taken Harry aside after they had gotten back to their house from the hut on the rock expedition; taking off his belt, he dangled it before Harry's eyes. "You may have learned about your freaky powers now, boy," he snarled, "but one use of them here from now on – ONE use – and I'll not hesitate to take this to you."

Harry had swallowed and said, "Yes, sir," in an obedient little voice, but he couldn't forget that moment. He knew his uncle well enough by now to know when a threat was real and when it was a bluff, and this was very real. And the last thing he wanted to have happen was feel that belt whipping him.

So even as he learned magic, he held himself back from doing his best, just as he had in the Muggle school, and all the teachers recorded him as a mediocre student, except Snape, who recorded him as a wretched one.

(After all, he had to go back to Privet Drive every summer, and he couldn't let his magic loose there. He had held it in hard for ten years, and he couldn't stop holding it in now, so he just let little bits out to do his work in class.)

* * *

At twelve, Sirius started putting as much distance between himself and his birth family as possible.

Spending a summer being tortured was a good way to make one both fear and despise one's family, Sirius learned. He'd been right to fear what his sorting would cost him; both his parents now hated him for it. His father mostly ignored him, shooting him a derogatory "mudblood-lover" or "blood-traitor" if he ever saw him, but his mother took it on herself to re-indoctrinate him properly.

That meant hours of lessons in proper pureblood etiquette and in the reasons why they were better than the "filthy mudbloods." Sirius had a temper and couldn't keep from talking back at times when her statements became outrageous, which turned her lessons into torture sessions. She never laid a hand on him (Sirius bit his lip and prevented himself from remembering the nights when she would hug him and tuck him in), but he quickly learned to fear a wand lifted in his direction. His mother perfected sharp stinging hexes and whipping jinxes on him and other spells that left no marks but made him miserably uncomfortable.

It got to the point where Sirius flinched if she even pointed at him with her wand, even if she did nothing. He had never been so glad to escape back to Hogwarts.

No one knew what had happened there, except perhaps James, who gave him a few odd looks when he flinched as the professors pulled out their wands to teach. But Sirius, determined to rebel, didn't reform his ways as his parents might have wished. He threw himself into making friends with Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, who were definitely not pureblooded, and brought them into the close friendship he and James had formed the previous year. Even the discovery that Remus was a werewolf didn't phase him. His parents hated werewolves, and he knew from knowing Remus last year that they could be perfectly normal wizards most of the time. That combination of facts made him determined to befriend Remus all the more when he knew he was a werewolf, partly because he couldn't bear to see Remus lonely and partly because doing so felt very rebellious indeed.

And he played more pranks on Slytherin than ever before and dragged his friends into doing that too. Slytherins represented the dark, the bigoted side he was determinedly choosing against. He saw everything in black and white, and the Slytherins were black.

The only exception he gave to this was that he never pranked his little brother, who came to Hogwarts and was sorted into Slytherin that year. He gave Regulus immunity.

Sirius found a surrogate family with James, Remus, and Peter, and a purpose in repelling every hint of pureblooded bigotry that came near him. And there were times at Hogwarts when he was happy.

(But deep down inside, Sirius knew he had been wounded deeply by the summer, and the wounds were bleeding badly. He knew he threw himself everything he was doing to mask the pain of being tortured by his own family. He knew, even if he never acknowledged it to himself, that his heart's cry was for someone else to love him like a parent.)

* * *

At twelve, Harry was beaten by his uncle.

He hadn't asked for a house elf to show up in his bedroom on the night of his birthday. He hadn't asked Dobby to drop the pudding on the kitchen floor, either. But there was no way he could explain house elves or why this one had ruined the pudding to his uncle. There was no point anyhow; Vernon would have just decreed it his fault no matter what he said. And his uncle was most determined to follow up on his promise from last summer. So Harry gritted his teeth and clenched his hands and felt the blows fall sharply across his thin back.

 _Dobby has failed most spectacularly in preventing me from going back to Hogwarts,_ Harry thought with a grim smile as he watched bars being nailed to his window afterwards. The house elf must have thought that threatening him with getting in trouble with his aunt and uncle would be enough to make him say he wouldn't go back to Hogwarts. But Harry was honest, and he wouldn't say that unless he meant it. And what Dobby apparently hadn't realized was that he would much rather take this one punishment, even if it was harsher than any he'd ever received before, and go back to Hogwarts, where he was free and could preform magic and wasn't just a drudge and a freak, than stay here and be punished by the Dursleys' words and disgust all year round. Going back to the magical world was well worth one beating.

Still, Harry thought as he lay on his side, feeling every bleeding welt on his back stand out sharply, this incident had done something to him. Some little living hope in him had died, and he felt empty and dried out.

(If he had bothered trying to identify it, which he really didn't, he might have realized that it was the hope that his life would ever get better that had died. He could stay here and be a freak, or he could go back to where he was a wizard and be in danger. Apparently he couldn't be safe _– or loved –_ anywhere.)


	2. Thirteen

**I do not own Harry Potter. Some of the text in the last half of this chapter is taken from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.**

 **I am aware that according to canon, Sirius was disowned and wound up living with the Potters at sixteen. I have changed that here, both because I wanted Sirius's to match Harry's, and because I thought he deserved to have more than one year with a family that loved him before he came of age.**

 **Reviews would be lovely!**

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Thirteen**

When Sirius was thirteen, he ran away.

It was the Cruciatus that did it. He had steeled himself as much as he could for another summer of going back to his mother's torture after breaking all her rules at Hogwarts (he had spent both Christmases with James and the Potter family and enjoyed himself very much). The first part of the summer had gone all right, considering what he had to fear; Regulus avoided him as much as possible, and his father ignored him utterly, causing him pain of a different kind than the physical which he didn't like to think about. His mother seemed absorbed in Regulus and barely paid attention to him.

The beginning of the end came when his mother found the stash of letters from his friends he kept hidden in his room. He had been writing back and forth with them almost continually since summer began, needing the contact with people who didn't hate him, and James seemed to have an uncanny sense of how much Sirius needed the contact, judging by the sheer number of letters he wrote. (Sirius had the uncomfortable feeling that though he didn't think anyone at Hogwarts knew what his life at home was like, James came closest to guessing – which was strange, given how happy his home was.) But Sirius knew that his mother would hate him for corresponding with werewolves and blood traitors, so he kept the letters hidden. That day, though, Walburga went up to "clean" his room – Sirius thought it was more like spying on it. She found the letters.

"Blood-traitor and wretch!" she shouted at him, marching down the stairs with his letters in hand.

Sirius stared, shocked and momentarily numb, at the precious pieces of parchment in her hands. "My letters –" he stammered blankly. "You – you had no right."

"No right to know that a son of mine insists on consorting with blood traitors and mudbloods?" his mother shrieked. She snatched her wand out of her skirt and waved it, and Sirius felt as though a slap had been laid across his cheek. "I raised you better than this!" she shouted. "I raised you to be a noble pureblood, but you insist on sullying the name of Black with your despicable actions!"

"You raised me to be a pureblooded bigot, you mean!" Sirius shouted back, losing his temper. "And associating with perfectly worthy wizards may seem despicable to you, but it's not to me!"

"You are a disgrace to the house of Black!" his mother screeched.

"Then maybe I don't want to be a part of it any longer!" Sirius exclaimed.

That shocked her into silence, and Sirius stood breathing hard and thought about those hastily said words. If he got himself thrown out, he'd be burned off the tapestry; he'd be cast out of the only home he'd ever known; he'd be disowned and alone. Yet wouldn't that be better than the wretched life he had here, continually fighting his parent's ideals and being punished for it?

Walburga drew a deep breath and began again more quietly. "This has gone on long enough, Sirius," she said firmly. "I can't have you disgracing the name of Black any longer. You will give up your ridiculous notions and your unworthy friends and start again as a pureblood worthy of your name. Tourjours pur."

"And if I don't?" Sirius asked defiantly.

"This is not an option," his mother answered angrily. "You have trifled with your birthright long enough, Sirius. I have had too much of this! You will end your foolishness now."

"No," said Sirius quietly.

"What?" Walburga stared at him.

Sirius squared his shoulders. He couldn't give up his friends, and more importantly, after meeting them he couldn't go back to the old pureblood prejudice without knowing he was wrong. Come what may, he had set his course that day back when he was seven, and there was no turning back now.

"No," he said flatly. "I will never give my friends up. I will never become a pureblooded bigot. I don't care about the name of Black," he added dangerously. "And there is nothing you can say or do that will make me change my mind."

Walburga's eyes flashed; she raised her wand and incanted, _"Crucio."_

Sirius collapsed to the floor, writhing and crying out in agony. He had never even known pain could feel this strong, could throb all through him and set every nerve on fire. He had never known it was possible to endure that level of agony.

He had no real concept of how long the torture lasted before his mother lifted the curse. When she did, he felt tears running hot down his cheeks. He lay on the floor, trembling and whimpering faintly.

Walburga gave him a look of complete disdain; then she stalked past him and flung the pile of letters she still held in her left hand into the fireplace. She turned back and looked down her nose at him where he lay shivering with pain.

"Nothing I can do?" she said coldly. "You may want to reconsider that." With that she stalked from the room.

Sirius curled in on himself and watched the letters burn, whimpering as phantom pains shot through him. He didn't even try to disguise the tears running down his cheeks. Never in a thousand years had he thought his mother would actually cast the torture curse on him. Lying there, he realized that there was no place for him in the Black family and perhaps never had been. His mother might as well have cast him out, for what she had just done.

The thought filtered through Sirius's dazed mind that he had to leave. If he stayed here, Walburga would almost certainly cast the Cruciatus on him again, and Sirius knew he couldn't stand the pain again. He had to get out of here – but to where?

The flames he was idly staring at suddenly gave him the answer – he could Floo out of here. He would go to James, of course; James was his first and best friend, and his parents were the only people he thought might let him stay unexpected for the rest of the summer. Sirius dragged himself to a sitting position, grimly determined. Tonight he would leave, and if in any way he could help it, he would never come back to Grimmauld Place or the Blacks. He was done.

That night, at an unearthly hour when everyone should be asleep, a small, slim figure sneaked down the stairs with his school trunk. He flung a handful of Floo powder into the coals on the hearth, whispered, "Potter Manor," and with a rush of the Floo was gone.

Sirius crashed out the other end onto the Potter's living room floor, his trunk beside him; he was still trembling faintly from the Cruciatus and didn't bother getting to his feet. Minutes later the living room door flew open, and James and his parents rushed in. The moment James saw Sirius, he raced across the room and skidded to his knees beside his friend.

"Sirius! What's wrong? Why are you here?" he demanded, rapid fire.

Sirius stared into James's face, creased with concern, and felt too tired and oddly too safe to lie. "My mum cast the Cruciatus on me," he said simply.

He heard Dorea gasp sharply; James's eyes went large, and he put his hand on Sirius's arm, but it was Charlus Potter who spoke. "Then you will stay here, of course," he said flatly.

Sirius went limp with relief; he couldn't help himself. Dorea looked at Charlus and gave a decisive nod. "Maisy," she said softly. When the house elf appeared, she requested, "Please take Sirius's trunk to his room."

For some reason, Sirius's mind latched onto the words "his room" and found an odd comfort in them as the house elf popped his trunk away. Dorea came over then and reached out to him, but in spite of himself, Sirius flinched away; a woman leaning over him was associated with pain in his mind. He then bit his lip, wondering what she must think of him, but a look of sorrow and – understanding, perhaps? – flashed across her face. "James, help him to the kitchen," she requested gently. "I think this situation requires hot cocoa." She turned and left the room with her husband.

James grasped Sirius's arms and helped him to his feet; he had preserved a shocked silence since Sirius's announcement. "I'm sorry," he said now, quietly.

Sirius shrugged, determined to play it off. "I'm okay," he said stubbornly. "I've never been like them, anyway."

"I know," James said softly. For some reason, that made Sirius mad. What right did James – James, who had a perfect family and a perfect life – have to pretend he understood everything that had gone wrong for Sirius?

"No, you don't!" he exclaimed sharply. "Your parents aren't pureblooded bigots who can't see past the ends of their noses! Don't pretend to understand when you can't! Your – your mum would never torture you!"

James, to his credit, stayed calm, though his face was very grave. "No, I can't understand," he said steadily. "But Mum is a Black, you know – a white sheep in the family, but a Black nonetheless. When I first made friends with you, she wrote me how strange and dangerous it was for you to hold our beliefs with a family like yours. She'll understand."

Sirius swallowed hard. So that was how James had always come closer than any of the others to understanding how hard his home life was. He had forgotten for the moment that Dorea was on his family tree. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

James shook his head. "Nothing you said that wasn't true," he said cheerfully. "Now come on! Hot cocoa in the middle of the night isn't something I'm willing to pass up."

Sirius chuckled shakily and let James help him into the kitchen.

Charlus and Dorea were there with the hot cocoa, and to Sirius's infinite relief the conversation stayed light. Neither of the adults asked details of what had happened to him; they just talked about everything they would do that summer, casually including him in all their plans, and insisted he call them Uncle Charlus and Aunt Dorea. But when the boys were sent from the kitchen to go to bed, he heard Dorea explode the moment they had left.

"She used the Cruciatus on him, Charlus! He's only thirteen. I can't believe she would do that!"

Charlus seemed to agree, for Dorea continued flatly, "He's not going back, Charlus. Not this summer, not ever. I won't permit it."

In spite of himself, Sirius smiled at those words. He didn't dare trust them, not yet, but maybe he had gained an advocate on his side tonight.

Curled up in a warm bed across the hall from James's room half an hour later, Sirius wondered whether he could stay here permanently or not. He was pretty sure Dorea Potter would keep her promise not to let him go back to the risk of the Cruciatus, but neither was he sure that the Potters would be willing to give him a home here.

He found himself longing, with a fierceness that surprised him, for this to be permanent.

As he drifted off to sleep, he found himself remembering the warm hug Dorea had given him when she sent him off to bed; it has been years since his mother hugged him like that, and he had stiffened in the embrace, not sure what to do, but she had only hugged him tighter. And he remembered the warm, fond look in Charlus's eyes when he looked at Sirius over cocoa; he couldn't remember if his father had ever looked at him like that.

(And he thought he may have found a permanent, happy _home_ , after all.)

* * *

At thirteen, Harry ran away.

It ended with Aunt Marge, but it began, Harry realized later, with the strange black dog in the neighborhood. He had been seeing it around for several weeks that summer; it had started showing up around the neighborhood, skulking in the shadows, but Harry got the odd feeling that it was watching him. The third time he had seen it, he had tentatively approached it with a piece of meat he had hidden from his supper the night before, noticing that the dog was far too skinny to be healthy. The dog had watched him approach, looking cautious, but when Harry offered the meat, it had snapped it up instantly. It let Harry pet it after that, wagging its tail just a little.

Harry had thought that this summer might be a better one than the last disastrous one, particularly if he could make friends with the dog. And then Aunt Marge had arrived, and Harry's life had become miserable instantly. She was even worse than the Dursleys at insulting Harry and, worse, his parents.

Harry had learned over the years to take insults to himself without showing anger or the hurt they sometimes inflicted, but his parents – his parents, whom he had learned so recently were heroes, his parents, who were not there to defend themselves – were something else altogether, and there was only so much abuse of them Harry could take before he snapped.

Aunt Marge had called his mum a bad egg who had run off with a wastrel and produced Harry, and now she was on to mocking James. "A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy scrounger who –"

"He was not," Harry said, suddenly and fiercely, shaking with anger. His father had been a noble man, he thought furiously.

Aunt Marge swung on Harry. "Proud of your parents, are you? They go and get themselves killed in a car crash (drunk, I expect) –"

"They didn't die in a car crash!" Harry shouted, springing to his feet. He was sick and tired of that lie. Murder was entirely different from an crash.

"They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!" screamed Aunt Marge, swelling with fury. "You are an insolent, ungrateful little –"

And that was when Aunt Marge started swelling like a balloon and didn't stop. Harry stared at her, stunned, and realized he had blown her up. He hadn't exactly intended that to happen, but he _had_ wanted her silenced very badly, and at least this was keeping her quiet. Harry couldn't feel the least bit sorry for her after all her insults.

He suddenly realized that Uncle Vernon was staring at him with both fear and loathing in his eyes, and he abruptly remembered the night Dobby had broken the pudding and Uncle Vernon had beaten him. He knew that his uncle would do it again for this, and in that moment he knew he couldn't stay in that house. There was no way he would let himself be beaten again. He was sick and tired of the Dursleys and their treatment of him, and he wasn't going to stay there and take it one more minute.

Fueled by anger and fear, Harry tore out of the kitchen. The door of the cupboard flew open, and Harry dragged his trunk out, barely noticing that he had opened the lock on the cupboard magically without even thinking about it. He shoved his trunk toward the front door and dashed up the stairs, hearing behind him the ruckus of the Dursleys and Ripper trying to figure out what to do about Aunt Marge. Diving under his bed, he snatched the pillowcase with his books and presents out from under the loose floorboard; then he grabbed Hedwig's cage (Hedwig was at the Weasleys') and flew back down the stairs. He was at the door, trunk and all, when Uncle Vernon burst out of the dining room.

"You, boy!" he exclaimed. "Get back in there and fix this!"

But Harry was, for the moment, beyond being intimidated by his uncle. He threw open his trunk, snatched his wand out, and pointed it at the fat man.

"No," he said flatly, breathing fast. "She deserved it." He threw the door open. "I've had enough," he said sharply, and hurried out into the night.

He had made it about a block before he sank down on a low wall, out of breath with anger and exertion. He buried his head in his hands and tried to sort out the confusion racing through him.

He was furious with Aunt Marge for everything she had unfairly said; for that matter, he was angry about the verbal abuse the Dursleys had heaped on him for years; this was only an extension of that. He was alsoafraid of the repercussions his magic would have, both from his uncle and the Wizarding world. He was suddenly remembering the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Magic and realizing that he had shattered it to pieces tonight.

Further, he realized as he calmed down that he had absolutely no idea what to do or where to go. He could go to Ron's, perhaps, but he didn't even know the exact address for the Burrow, and it would be much too far for him to drag his trunk there anyway. He had no idea where Hermione even lived, and no way to contact anyone without Hedwig. He lifted his head and ran one hand through his hair.

"What have I done?" he asked the night quietly.

He knew pretty well what he had done; he had run away and left himself with nowhere to go. The one and only thing he was absolutely not going to do, though, was go back to the Dursleys. He had left them behind forever.

He realized suddenly that something had heard his question; something big with gleaming eyes was coming toward him. Harry raised his wand quickly – he had already broken the Decree, it didn't matter if he did again – and said, _"Lumos."_

The light that lit the end of his wand, though, only showed the big black dog that had been hanging around the neighborhood coming toward him. Harry relaxed and sank back on his trunk, murmuring, _"Nox."_

"It's only you," he said aloud, feeling relieved.

The dog rubbed against his leg with a soft whine. It was the most affectionate the large animal had been since Harry first saw it, and he idly rubbed its ears with one hand. "I'm sorry I don't have any food to give you this time," he said quietly.

The dog only wagged its tail, and Harry felt relieved that it wasn't going to leave the moment it discovered he didn't have anything for it to eat. For some reason, he felt much less alone with the big black dog there.

He could never really explain afterwards why he began talking to the dog, except that he needed someone to listen at that moment, and with Hedwig at the Weasleys', the dog was his only choice.

"What am I to do?" he asked it softly, continuing to rub its ears. "I've run away from the Dursley's," he told it.

The dog stiffened suddenly, looking up at him with big eyes. Harry sighed. "Not the smartest thing to do, I guess," he admitted, "but I couldn't stay there any longer. Aunt Marge – she was talking about my parents, calling them –" but he couldn't bear to repeat the words, even to a dog. "I can take anything she says about me," he added after a moment, "but I can't stand it when she starts running my parents down."

The dog gave a decisive bark that sounded oddly approving to Harry. He chuckled wearily. "So I blew her up," he told the dog. "Like a balloon, I mean, not a bomb," he added hastily. "I didn't exactly mean to; I just wanted her to stop talking, but I'm not sorry I blew her up either."

The dog gave another approving bark.

"But now I don't know what to do," Harry whispered. "The wizards will be mad with me for breaking the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Magic, so I can't go to them. And I'm _not_ going back to the Dursleys. Uncle Vernon" – he shuddered without meaning to – "would be furious. And I can't go through that again," he breathed nearly inaudibly. "I _can't_."

The dog whined softly; it was shivering as it pressed against his legs. Suddenly it took a few steps backwards – and before Harry's astonished eyes it stretched and grew into a man.

Harry sprang to his feet and lifted his wand again. "What?" he stammered, shocked.

"It's alright, Harry," the man said quickly. "I'm not going to hurt you, I swear."

Harry lowered his wand a bit at that, though he was still dizzy with the idea of this dog changing into a man. Clearly, he thought warily, the man was a wizard.

"What do you want?" he asked cautiously.

The man held out his arms a little. "This is complicated," he said cautiously, "but I'm your godfather, Harry, and I could offer you another place to stay."

Harry sat down abruptly on his trunk. There was so much strange about that one sentence that he forced aside the part of him that wanted to latch onto the idea that an adult might possibly want him around and focused on the mystery of who this man was.

"You're my godfather," he repeated blankly.

"Yes," the man told him. "Sirius Black."

He said the name hesitantly, as if half-ashamed of it, or as if he expected Harry to recognize it from some less-than-savory context. Harry concentrated and suddenly remembered that this had been the name of the prisoner the telly had said had escaped.

"You're that escaped prisoner!" he exclaimed, lifting his wand again.

"I'm innocent," Sirius said quickly. "I swear to you, Harry, I didn't do it."

"Didn't do what?" Harry asked suspiciously.

"Betray your parents," Sirius said desperately. "I didn't mean for them to die, Harry, I didn't!"

"Betray my parents?" Harry repeated, feeling stupid and overwhelmed. "How could you have betrayed my parents?"

Sirius was watching him cautiously. "You mean to say no one has ever told you about me," he said slowly.

"I never heard your name until the announcement to look out for you this summer," Harry said flatly.

The man shook his head; even in the dim light, Harry could tell he was frowning.

"I'll start at the beginning then," he said quietly. "I was best friends with your father at Hogwarts, and when you were born, he and your mum named me your godfather. I was to watch over you and – and take you in if anything happened to them. I'm so sorry, Harry; I should have been here for you."

Harry shrugged, trying to take all this in, but he also lowered his wand, realizing the man wasn't dangerous. "What happened?" he asked in a small voice.

Sirius sighed and seemed to deflate somehow. "Voldemort was after your parents," he said softly. "They were going into hiding under the Fidelius Charm – it's where you conceal a location and only one person knows where it is. I was going to be Secret Keeper, but I thought I was too obvious and I convinced your parents to let another of your father's friends be the Keeper. But he betrayed your parents to Voldemort. I'm sorry, Harry, so sorry. I should never have suggested him."

There was so much new information here that Harry was feeling dizzy; clearly his parents' death had been more complicated than he thought. He had no time to try absorbing it, though, considering that Sirius was waiting for an answer.

"If it was the other man that betrayed them, I don't see how it was your fault," he said flatly. "It was his choice, not yours."

Sirius drew in a deep breath and straightened a little. "After that I went after the traitor," he told Harry. "But he blew up twelve Muggles and escaped. When the Aurors came, they only found me and arrested me for it all. I've been in Azkaban the last twelve years. I wish I had been here for you, Harry."

Harry shrugged; he was used to fending for himself, without anyone there for him. "You just escaped recently," he said, trying to piece the puzzle together. "And you can turn yourself into a big black dog."

For the first time, Sirius grinned. "Yes," he said, "I'm an Animagus."

Before the conversation could go on, there was a sudden series of sharp cracks in the distance. Sirius looked up sharply and came a step closer.

"I'm guessing that's the Ministry, here to deal with your nice piece of magic on your aunt," he said softly, smiling again at the last bit.

Harry stiffened and stood up. "I need to get out of here!" he whispered, panicked. He didn't want them to find him and officially kick him out.

"Let's get a bit further away, and then we can make a few more plans," Sirius suggested. He changed swiftly back into a dog, which left Harry gaping. He shook his head, picked up his trunk, and followed the dog down the quiet streets of Little Winging.

When they had gone so far that he was getting quite out of breath from dragging his trunk, the dog stopped in a secluded spot and changed back into Sirius. Turning, he took Harry's shoulders gently in his hands and looked down at the boy.

"Listen, Harry," he said gently. "If you don't want to back to the Dursleys, you're quite right not to. If you've got somewhere else in England that you want to go, I could transport you there. Or," he added hesitantly, "if you wanted, I do have the right as godfather to take you in."

Something about the way he said the last phrase made Harry think that was what Sirius really wanted, though the man didn't dare say so; that, and the hands touching his shoulders in a comforting way, made him feel suddenly safe.

He debated what to say. He was infinitely relieved that Sirius was not forcing him to go back to the Dursleys or even to face the Ministry; this was something that not even Dumbledore had done for him. But where should he go? Logically, he should probably tell Sirius to take him to the Burrow; the Weasleys had taken him in last summer, and they likely would again. Going anywhere with this innocent prisoner was a ridiculously dangerous idea, for Harry had no proof he was innocent beyond the man's word.

But Sirius seemed to want him, to want to take care of Harry. This was the first time any adult had acted like they wanted him, and the idea was intoxicating. Further, Harry somehow felt almost safe around him, as though something deep inside him, beyond his conscious memories, associated safety with this man. And Harry had never been known for doing the safe thing, anyhow.

"Do you really want me to go with you?" he asked suddenly, because he couldn't make up his mind until he knew.

Sirius Black looked down steadily into Harry's eyes, not moving his hands from Harry's shoulders. "More than anything," he said softly, his voice fervent. "But I'm on the run, and it's up to you."

Harry swallowed and stood up a bit straighter. "I think – I want to go with you," he said softly.

The broad smile that stretched immediately across Sirius' face made him feel better about the decision. Sirius cocked his head slightly to one side, muttering aloud, "Where to now? Do you know any French, Harry?" he asked suddenly.

"Just a little, from primary school," Harry replied blankly, not following.

Sirius grinned again. "Perfect," he said. "We'll hide out in France for now, then. But I'll need your wand to get us there."

"Why?" Harry asked, puzzled.

"Has no one explained to you about Apparition yet?" Sirius returned. "Well, it works like this . . . "

Several very disorienting Apparitions and the selection of one run-down hotel later, Harry lay on a rather lumpy bed in a cheap hotel in France. Sirius, apparently, spoke the French language perfectly, because he had brought them here and paid for the hotel with the few Galleons Harry still had in his trunk. Now the man who claimed to be his godfather was sound asleep in one of the beds the room offered, but Harry was wide awake on the other and studying the ceiling.

He had taken a great risk, he knew, coming here with this man he knew virtually nothing about; but Sirius had offered Harry the thing he had wanted as far back as he could remember: an adult coming and taking him from the Dursleys and loving him for who he was. He knew that if he hadn't gone with Sirius, he would always have wondered what would have happened if he had – if he had thrown away his one chance at having a family of his own.

He wouldn't count on anything yet. But as he rolled over and buried himself under the covers, Harry felt more hopeful than he had since summer began. He found himself remembering the firm yet gentle hands on his shoulders, the warmth in the man's eyes as he looked at him in a way that made him feel important to the man, and a fierce longing for Sirius to keep him and love him rose up in his heart.

(Because maybe, he thought, just maybe he had been found by the one man who could give him a happy _home_.)


	3. Healing

**I do not own Harry Potter.**

 **Thank you SO much to everyone who has favorited or followed, and especially to everyone who has reviewed! Responses mean everything to me!**

* * *

 **Chapter 3: Healing**

At thirteen, Sirius learned that it was not a crime to state a different opinion from an adult.

He was having lunch with the Potter family a few days after his escape to them. They had included him almost effortlessly in everything they did and sworn that they would never let him go back to the Blacks, and Sirius was slowly, slowly starting to relax. It was dawning on him that if he never had to go back to his mother's torture again, he was free – finally free to be himself and live the way he wanted to.

They were talking about history that lunch, because James was complaining about how boring Professor Binns made History of Magic, and Dorea was correcting him that history could be fascinating. "I wish they would replace Binns," she commented. "A teacher with a passion for the subject could do so much with it."

"Take Grindlewald, for instance," Charlus suggested. "If everyone knew the insidious way he took over the world, maybe they wouldn't be so welcoming of this Voldemort chap. The Muggles never realized what a threat Grindlewald was until it was too late."

"They never knew about him at all," Sirius jumped in. He had read the Muggle accounts of what they called World War II with some fascination. "They only saw his Muggle assistant, Hitler, and . . ."

He trailed off as he realized he had just contradicted an adult and went white. At home he sometimes took a perverse pleasure in correcting or goading his parents, but it had only gotten him punished. Here he didn't want them to think of him that way, as the rebellious kid who would always disagree with them. He flinched, expecting the wand-made slap on the cheek his mother would have given him for a correction like that, and fell silent.

But then he realized the whole table was silent, and glancing up nervously he found that Charlus and Dorea were looking at him – but not with hatred in their eyes. Dorea's held a dark understanding; Charlus simply looked curious. James was just eating his lunch, not realizing what had just happened. "And?" Charlus prompted.

Sirius drew several deep, shuddering breaths. Could this be real? Could the Potters actually let him have his own opinions without punishing him for them?

"And they never realized there was anyone behind Hitler," he said, his voice shaking a bit. "I mean, Hitler was bad enough by himself, but when Grindlewald gave him power, he was nearly unstoppable."

The conversation went on, but Sirius dropped out of it, still feeling overwhelmed. But Dorea drew him aside after the meal. "We don't mind if you correct us or have a different opinion from us, Charlus and I," she told him gently. "You can say you disagree, and we won't mind. We won't appreciate it if you talk back to us, but we'll never punish you like your mother did."

For some reason, Sirius felt tears welling in his eyes at that. Dorea stepped forward and hugged him, and this time Sirius returned the hug.

(And he felt, in that moment, like he was treasured and loved. Like he was a _son_ , and not just troublesome offspring.)

* * *

At thirteen, Harry learned that Sirius would not strike him, not even for accidental magic.

He woke up in the hotel the morning after he had run away to find Sirius sitting up in the other bed. By light of day, the man he had run away with looked distinctly scruffy; his tangled, dirty hair fell almost to his waist, and his clothes were torn and filthy. He was not at all the type of man the Dursleys would have approved of Harry going with, and for some reason this made Harry feel safe with him. Also his eyes, though they were shadowed and sunken, were warm as he looked at Harry, and he couldn't remember any of the Dursleys ever looking at him with that amount of warmth in their eyes.

Sirius grinned at Harry and gave a barking laugh as he got out of bed. "So we are runaways to France in actuality, not just in my dreams," he said warmly.

Harry just nodded and sat up. He didn't know yet how to interact with this man.

"I'm going to shower first off," Sirius commented. "I haven't had a chance to be clean in a long, long time. Then I'll have to find a way to cut my hair, and we need to start looking for a house – we should go to Gringotts first, I suppose –"

He broke off sharply, staring at Harry's face – or more particularly, the discolored bruise on Harry's cheek. Self-consciously, Harry lifted one hand to cover it. He had gotten it several days ago for not finishing the chores quickly enough, but it didn't particularly bother him. Sirius, though, was staring at it as though his world had ended, and that made Harry very uncomfortable.

Slowly Sirius lifted one hand toward Harry's face. Harry flinched automatically – hands near his face were never a good thing – but Sirius did not back off and laid roughened fingertips very lightly against the bruise.

It was the first time Harry could remember anyone touching his face without hurting him.

"Your uncle struck you," Sirius said quietly, brokenly. It wasn't a question, but Harry found himself nodding slightly anyway.

Sirius's eyes were shadowed. "Harry," he said steadily, "I solemnly swear, on my honour as a Marauder, I will never lift my hand to you."

Harry stared at him incredulously. He found himself doubting that anyone whom he lived with permanently would never strike him, but he didn't dare contradict Sirius.

"I wish I had come for you sooner," Sirius said as he let his hand fall back, his voice full of self-loathing.

Harry didn't know how to deal with Sirius saying this, either, so he latched onto the one thing the man had said that he thought he could ask about.

"Marauder's honour?" he asked shyly.

"No one told you about the Marauders?" Sirius asked incredulously. "Well, I have quite a story to tell you, then. But I need to get cleaned up first."

That evening, Harry sat curled up on Sirius's bed, facing the man himself, and listened to the story. They had had a very busy day. After they had both showered, Sirius had taught Harry the cutting curse, and Harry had cut Sirius's hair with it to a much more reasonable length. Then Harry found his vault key in his trunk, and they had gone to Gringotts in Paris and withdrawn gold. Harry had been somewhat surprised that he had a vault in Paris as well as London, but Sirius had told him that the Potters were an old family, the type that didn't keep all their gold in one place. Now, with money to pay the hotel for a few days, food for that time, and a plan to go house-hunting tomorrow, they sat together on Sirius's bed, and Sirius told Harry the tragic story of the Marauders, of close friends and a young couple and a love that would end in death, and of a prophecy that had doomed them all and the Halloween that had broken the once close-knit friends apart forever.

Harry had found the day up to that point strange but nice; the longer he spent around Sirius, the more he began trusting him. Sirius was clearly planning for Harry to live with him here in France, and Harry was trying to get used to the idea of an adult wanting him to live with them.

But though he loved learning about his parents at Hogwarts, the story of how his parents had lost their lives because they were targeted and how Sirius lost his freedom infuriated Harry, and though he said very little, he felt his anger and sadness at the senseless way he and those he loved had lost everything building up in him. Finally, as Sirius reached the end of the story, it exploded, and the lamp next to Sirius shattered.

Instantly Harry realized what he had done and sprang off the bed backwards. "Sorry," he said quickly, watching Sirius's face. Any moment now he would become furious, teach Harry what the new punishment for magic would be here. Faint scars from a year ago throbbed against his back, and he prayed his new punishment would not be worse than that, at least.

But Sirius was watching him with – compassion, mostly? Harry couldn't tell. "It's alright, Harry," he said gently. "I've destroyed a fair few things in frustration over my life, and you have every reason to be mad right now."

Harry was trembling slightly as he watched Sirius with wide, wary eyes. The kind words barely sank in. "But I did magic," he whispered.

A flash of such dark rage passed through Sirius's eyes that Harry shrank back a step; then the man closed his eyes and seemed to center himself. "Listen, Harry," he said softly, opening his eyes and looking directly at Harry, "we've all destroyed things when we get mad – all of us wizards. It's not anything wrong or anything to be afraid of. And you had all the justification in the world to be angry."

Harry could barely comprehend what Sirius seemed to be saying after a lifetime of suppressing his magic except when he was trying to perform a spell. "What are you going to do to me then?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. Better to know now and not have to fear it.

Sirius looked bitterly disappointed for a moment again; then he climbed off the bed and came toward Harry. Harry tried not to flinch and braced himself for whatever Sirius intended to do, but the man simply wrapped his arms around Harry and pulled him close.

Harry stood stiffly, barely realizing what was happening, his heart beating fast; but Sirius was holding him close, close, and half-hidden in the new robes Sirius had bought that day, Harry finally started to realize that the man didn't intend to hurt him.

"I swore to you that I would not hurt you, Harry," Sirius said softly. "And I meant it. I will never be angry at you for accidental magic."

Slowly, Harry relaxed and let himself lean into the warm, comforting touch. And there, hidden in Sirius's embrace, Harry finally began to lose his fear of Sirius's hands. Perhaps – perhaps with this man who had loved his parents, who claimed to love him, Harry could be safe and happy.

(The hopeful little bit of him that had crumbled to ashes the day his uncle beat him rose a phoenix, alive and somehow stronger than before.)

* * *

At thirteen and three quarters, Sirius received a letter.

He had been writing to the Potters off and on since the school year began; the odd days on which he got letters from James's parents were always brilliant days to him. He still felt tentative, though, strange and out of place in another family.

Toward the end of that year, the Marauders were hanging around in their dorms together, talking about the Animagus forms they wanted to achieve. Sirius was pretty sure his would be a dog of some sort. As the others talked, he idly concentrated on a small orange pillow on his bed and tried making it a dog; he became fascinated, concentrated hard, and a few minutes later a small orange puppy was prancing and barking around the room.

The others stopped short and stared at him, astonished. Remus told him he had just accomplished a ridiculously hard piece of transfiguration.

Sirius just shrugged it off. He was a good student and never found it hard to get fairly good grades, but he had never had the motivation to work hard at them. There was no one to care or praise him for it; his parents certainly didn't care and grades were hardly a thing the Marauders did much thinking about. He didn't find his sudden accomplishment all that interesting.

Five days later, he got the letter from Charlus and Dorea. James had apparently written to them about his dog, though he had not.

" _Congratulations on transfiguring a pillow into a dog! We can hardly believe you could do something like that, son. Even Charlus, who is good at transfiguration, never did that until fifth year. When you come home, you shall have to make a litter of pillow puppies for me."_

Sirius stared at that letter for a long, long moment, letting both the warm admiration he had never received from his parents and the word "home" sink deep into him. Something broken and dried deep down inside him felt warm and alive again.

Ever after that, Sirius did his absolute best in all his classes. That pushed the rest of the Marauders – and incidentally Lily – to do better too, but he didn't do it because of that. He did it because for the first time in his life, he had parents who cared – actually cared – about the details of his life like his grades and praised him for them.

(And praise from the Potters was like praise from the warm and loving parents he had never had.)

* * *

At thirteen and three quarters, Harry let his full magic loose for the first time.

It was the very end of the school year, and Sirius had come over from France. He and Harry had spent the previous summer together, and when Harry had gone back to Hogwarts, Sirius had enchanted a set of mirrors so they could talk to each other at night. Harry had finally learned to trust Sirius and cared about him now with the passionate love of a boy who had never had a parent to love before. Almost every night he would cast a _Silencio_ on his curtains and talk to Sirius – the man who actually cared about him, who was interested in the details of his school life.

Now Sirius had come discreetly over from France, both to pick Harry up and to make contact with Remus Lupin. He had carefully written Lupin over the past year and convinced him he was innocent. Harry had told Ron and Hermione who he was living with, though it was a complete secret from anyone else, and with Ron's full consent had managed to turn Scabbers over to the Ministry. He and Sirius were both hopeful that the conviction of Pettigrew that seemed to be coming would result in Sirius's pardon, but it hadn't happened yet, and they were perfectly prepared to live in France for the time being.

Harry sneaked out of the castle under the Invisibility Cloak that night after exams and crept to the far side of the Black Lake. A big black dog was waiting there, much healthier looking now, slowly wagging its tail.

"Padfoot!" Harry exclaimed, keeping his voice soft with an effort. He tossed off the cloak and sprinted toward the dog, which gave a quick bark of greeting. At the last second, the dog changed back into Sirius, who spread his arms wide, laughing, and caught Harry in them.

This time Harry returned the hug, clinging to Sirius like he never wanted to let go. This time, for the first time, Harry felt as though he would be going home at the end of the year.

He had barely let go of Sirius when he felt the cold begin to come creeping in – the insidious, creeping, hopeless cold that indicated the presence of a Dementor.

Harry hated Dementors. They made him remember that night Sirius had told him about – that terrible night when the Marauders crumbled apart and Voldemort won and lost and Harry was cursed to live nearly twelve years without love. Then Sirius gave a shuddering moan beside him, and he realized that they were affecting Sirius worse than him.

Sirius tried to draw his wand, but they were circling in on him, hundreds of Dementors focused on him. With a groan he collapsed to the sand, nearly unconscious.

Harry whipped out his wand. "Expecto Patronum," he breathed, remembering the lessons he had taken with Remus this year, trying to focus on the memory he used of the first time Sirius had hugged him back in that hotel room in France.

But the Dementors were too strong – he could hear his mother's voice pleading – Voldemort's high laugh – in a moment he, too, would be overcome –

But he couldn't give in, for Sirius's sakr he couldn't give in. With a tremendous effort he gathered up everything he felt for Sirius – all the longing for a parent's love, all the emotions he had transferred to Sirius – and everything Sirius had done for him – all the memories of Sirius's hands on his shoulders, of warm gray eyes looking at him proudly like he was worth something and not just a freak, of Sirius telling him about his parents, of Sirius praising him for his flying – and shouted, "EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

For the first time in his life he held nothing back – he let the spell go with all the magic in him, and he felt as if a barrier deep within him, something he had created over his magic to keep it back, _broke_. A silver form burst from the tip of his wand, solid and glowing and warm; he realized that it was a stag. It tossed its antlers and flew at the Dementors. Harry watched, awed, as it attacked them with a determined ferocity, driving them back and away.

Warmth returned slowly as they left, warmth and hope, and then there were no Dementors anymore and his Patronus had circled back to him and stood, a wash of solid silvery light, in front of him.

" _Prongs,"_ Sirius gasped breathlessly beside him, and Harry realized Sirius had woken up. He was leaning on one elbow, staring awestruck at the stag. And then it hit Harry what Sirius meant; his eyes went wide and he slipped to his knees beside Sirius as his Patronus faded.

His Patronus was his father's Animagus form. Harry felt as if his father was still watching over him, and somehow, too, as if his father knew what Sirius had become to him and approved. He felt drained and at peace.

"Harry," Sirius said quietly, "Harry, you just saved my life. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Harry said, equally quietly. Tentatively he leaned up against Sirius; the older man promptly put an arm around his shoulders.

"Well," he said, more lightly, "I guess the Dementors are taking that Kiss-on-sight order more seriously than I thought they would."

"Be careful, Sirius," Harry pleaded softly; he knew his godfather could be reckless.

"Of course," he answered at once. "When am I not? But seriously," he added, when Harry began to protest, "if I live for another few weeks, you and I can begin our first complete summer in France together. You honestly think I'd die before that?"

That comment made Harry smile broadly.

"That was a wonderful bit of magic, though," Sirius added after a moment. "I've never known anyone to have a fully formed Patronus at thirteen. You're a brilliant wizard, Harry."

Later that night, as Harry crept back to the dorm under his invisibility cloak and a big black dog headed to meet Remus, Harry realized that in creating that Patronus he had used his magic fully, without holding back, for the first time in his life.

He realized, too, that Sirius hadn't minded in the least – had praised him, in fact – and he would be spending this summer with Sirius, not the Dursleys. It finally hit him that he never had to be afraid of his magic or hold back again.

He felt free.

(From that day on, all of Harry's professors, except for Snape, who was biased, reported an amazing improvement in his grades. He shot from mediocre to one of the best students in the school, because instead of being forced to repress his magic during the summer, he lived with a man who treasured him for it.)

* * *

At sixteen, Sirius was officially adopted.

It began when he got a Howler the first day of summer vacation. He and James were eating breakfast with their parents (he thought of James's parents as practically his by this time) when an owl flew in. Sirius immediately recognized it as the owl that occasionally brought letters to Regulus at Hogwarts and froze; it had been years since he'd had any contact with his parents, and he liked it that way. Anything they wanted to say to him could only be bad news.

The owl dropped a Howler on the table and flew off. Dorea whipped out her wand, but before she could do anything, the Howler began, Walburga's voice screeching out.

" _Blood-traitor, I have avoided disowning you as long as I can, in the hope that some day you might become a true and proper Black. But your actions have proved beyond doubt that you have deserted our ideals. Therefore I blasted you off the family tree this morning. You are no longer a Black, but an abomination."_

Sirius sat frozen, staring at the Howler as it shredded itself and disintegrated. It shouldn't hurt, he told himself, it shouldn't hurt. He'd deliberately cut all ties with his family years ago. But something about being disowned by his own parents, as though he'd never existed, still stung.

He jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder and looked up to realize Charlus Potter was looking at him compassionately.

"Do you know what it means?" he asked.

Sirius shook his head blankly. "She – she's disowned me," he faltered, knowing that Charlus wasn't looking for that but unable to guess what he was after.

Charlus smiled suddenly. "It means," he said, "that we can finally make this official. We can adopt you."

Sirius stared at him, stunned. He had been content to live with the arrangement he had had since he was thirteen, spending all his time outside Hogwarts with the Potters, writing Charlus and Dorea while at the school. James had become his brother in everything but name, closer to him than anyone else at Hogwarts.

Sure, there were times when he wished that he truly belonged somewhere, times when he doubted that the Potters saw him as a son as much as he saw them as his parents. But he had never in his wildest thoughts dared dream that the Potters wanted to adopt him as much as he wanted to be adopted.

"You mean it?" he whispered at last.

Charlus's hand tightened on his shoulder. "Oh, darling," Dorea said from across the table, "we've wanted to adopt you for years. The only reason we haven't is that if we did the Blacks might fight for custody of you to save face, and we couldn't risk you going back there."

"You must call us Dad and Mum now," Charlus said, half-serious, half-teasing, and it finally came home to Sirius that it was real. He laughed aloud, and if the others noticed the tears glinting in his eyes, they never said anything.

It became official a few days later. The Potters had enough political pull that Dad pushed the adoption through quickly. The day Dad and Mum Potter signed and Sirius signed his name beneath them and became their son was the best, most wonderful day of his life.

Sirius finally had a family that he was proud to call his own – what mattered more, that were proud to call him theirs.

(In spite of the war that was beginning to rage, Sirius could not have felt safer.)

* * *

At sixteen, Harry heard Sirius stand up in his defense in front of the entire Order.

They had been brainstorming, as they did so often, what was to be done about the war, and the conversation kept coming back to Harry, who had after all somehow done something years ago. Harry had the feeling Dumbledore was thinking about that mysterious "power that he knows not."

Sirius, he could tell, was beginning to get very fed up; he couldn't stand the others trying to put burden of the war on Harry's shoulders. Harry was feeling frustrated; it was his parents whose sacrifice had saved him, and he was getting sick and tired of even the Order thinking that he had the ability to duplicate what had happened when he was one. He had no idea what to say, though, and in the end it was Sirius who exploded.

"But if Potter could do something –" Eliaphas Dodge had just said.

Sirius shot to his feet so fast he sent his chair scooting into the wall.

"You are cowards," he spat. "Rank, dastardly cowards, all of you! Adults sitting back and waiting for a child to martyr himself to save you! You are too cowardly to do anything in this war, so you look to a child to come up with some inexplicable power to save your sorry hides!"

"Now, Sirius," Dumbledore began, but Sirius swung on him.

"You're most of the problem, keeping all the secrets you do," he said sharply. "What satisfaction do you get out of it? Once the disaster has struck, you can say, 'Oh, I knew all along,' and look smarter than anyone else? I nearly _died_ last year because you insisted on keeping secrets!

"And let me tell you something," he continued fiercely. "I don't care if you think Harry is prophesied to do something. I won't sit back and let you groom him to martyr himself for you! I don't care if there are _twenty_ prophecies predicting Harry does something! Harry is a child, and he is MY child, and I won't let you – any of you – put him on the front lines while you cower behind him!"

Harry, who had spent twelve years of his life fending for himself, was partly dumbfounded, partly awestruck, and mostly, somehow, very grateful as he listened to Sirius. _It is nice_ , he thought, _very nice to have someone you love defending you so fervently ._

(In spite of the fact that the war was beginning to get worse, in spite of the fact Harry knew he would still play some part in it sooner or later, Harry had never felt safer.)


	4. Thirty-three

**This is the last chapter! I hope you enjoyed my story! Thanks very much to everyone who read it.**

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Thirty-three**

At thirty-three, Sirius Black adopted Harry Potter.

It was all for Harry, everything he did. He had escaped Azkaban to protect Harry from the rat, but he had wanted to check on Harry first, just make sure he was happy.

In later years, he would shudder to think what would have happened if he hadn't spent that week in Privit Drive.

He had found Harry fairly easily, following scent and some latent godfatherly instinct, and when he had first seen the boy something had warned him not to walk away at once. He couldn't put his paw on anything then, particularly because his dog brain couldn't quite analyze what it was about Harry that felt off, but he had the instinct that something wasn't quite right. So he hung around for a few days.

Taking Harry to France with him the night his godson ran away had been a decision made on the whim of a moment, he knew, but he didn't regret it, not one bit. In the last few days since he had offered and Harry had made the amazing decision to trust him, he had realized both that his godson had been abused, and that he was somehow a wonderful person in spite of it.

But Sirius knew that the wounds of abuse run deep; he had experienced it himself. It had been years after he escaped his mother that he had managed to stop flinching when someone raised a wand at him, and that had only happened after Mum and Dad Potter had used their wands to heal him after a Quidditch accident he and James had had one summer. He had finally realized then that wands lifted to him could heal as well as hurt.

But he had never wanted Harry to experience what he had, never wanted his godson to carry the scars of abuse the rest of his life as he did. He wished fiercely he had broken out of Azkaban sooner. But he was here now, he had Harry, and he would do everything in his power to help him heal. He would never let him go again.

He stretched and got up. They had been living in the little French villa they had selected together for a couple of weeks now, after a week and a half at the hotel. Harry was finally beginning to relax around him, Sirius thought, finally beginning to trust that Sirius would not treat him as his relatives had. It would take time for his godson to learn to fully trust him, he knew, but at least he seemed to be starting right. Good thing, as he'd never had experience with parenting before.

The first morning they had moved to the new house had been rough, as Harry had woken ridiculously early and begun cooking breakfast for him. It had taken a rather long and strange conversation for Sirius to convince him that he did not have to always cook breakfast, or clean, or act like a house elf around Sirius. The conversation had left Harry rather bewildered and Sirius fiercely compassionate toward Harry and furious at his relatives. He had realized that morning that the abuse Harry had been subjected to had been more psychological than physical, and he determined to heal the unseen wounds as much as the bruise paste he had bought the first day they were here had removed the physical.

Harry greeted him warmly, if a little shyly, when he came downstairs this morning (Sirius had been unable to break his habit of getting up ridiculously early so far), and they began making breakfast together. Sirius had resolved, after that first conversation, to make cooking fun for Harry; clearly his godson was good at it, but it was something he had been forced to do without thanks or – this infuriated Sirius the most – even eating much of what he had made. If they did it together and occasionally got into food fights or cooked crazy French things, Sirius hoped he could make Harry's skill at it one he enjoyed using someday.

They went down to the little village next to them that afternoon to shop in the small local market. Harry's latent curiosity, driven deep by the blasted Dursleys, awoke when he was surrounded by so many French things, and he was asking questions, trying to use the faltering French Sirius had begun teaching him, when a family walked by that made nearly every man turn and stare.

Sirius watched them too – a father, mother, and two daughters. He could tell that the mother and daughters, unnaturally beautiful with their long blond hair and perfect faces, were at least partly Veela. He felt the pull of attraction, but the knowledge that the mother was married and the younger two were nearer Harry's age than his kept him from drooling at them like some of the men did.

He glanced at Harry, curious of his reaction. The boy was watching them, but he wasn't drooling or making a fool of himself. Sirius smirked; this might make good teasing material when Harry was ready to be teased.

But in the wake of the Veela family's passing flowed a wave of whispers. "Strange . . . they shouldn't be able to do that . . . unnatural . . . freakish."

Sirius felt Harry give a slight wince when that last word was said by the burly man currently selling them cheese and bit his lip. Another wound he would have to heal.

They were walking back to the villa together, laden with purchases, when Sirius opened the conversation. "So," he said, "to continue your magical education, the mum and daughters of that family back there were Veela."

"Were what?" Harry asked, confused.

Sirius grinned. "Veela," he said. "They're a type of magical person. The ladies are almost irresistibly attractive to men and tend to turn us into awestruck piles of mush."

Harry flushed. "I didn't find them irresistibly attractive," he said after a moment. "I mean, they were pretty, but –"

Sirius chuckled at him. "I noticed you didn't," he said warmly. "For your information, I don't find them irresistible either. Very attractive, yes; irresistible, no."

Harry chuckled at that, a warm little sound. It was one of the first times Sirius had heard him really laugh, and he thought to himself that he could easily spend the rest of his life coaxing that laugh out of his godson, making him smile. He'd had too little happiness in his life.

"By the way," Sirius said quietly after a moment, knowing he needed to address something else, "I'm guessing your wretched excuses of relatives called you freakish?"

The slight wince Harry gave at the word was confirmation, but the boy hesitated to say anything. Sirius could guess the reason pretty easily – he was debating if the relief it would be to confess this to someone else and get it off his chest was worth the risk that Sirius could use this as a weapon against him. To Sirius's immense relief, he trusted him enough to choose to tell.

"Yes," Harry whispered. "They almost never called me by my name. It was always 'freak' or 'boy.'"

Sirius bit his lip to keep back the wave of anger that washed over him; he had learned that showing his anger around Harry always scared the boy, who thought it was directed at him. He remembered the names Walburga had called him and the way words had had the power to hurt him almost worse than her wand; looking at the hunched way Harry held himself, he guessed words held dark power over him, too. He stopped walking.

"Harry," he said gently, making sure to emphasize the name, "maybe you should know that my birth mother tended to call me 'blood-traitor,' 'wretch,' or 'abomination.'"

Harry's jaw dropped, but by the look in his eyes, he understood what Sirius was trying to tell him. They were both in this together.

"I ran away to live with your dad and Mum and Dad when I was thirteen, you know," he continued, "and they called me 'son' and 'dear.' So I solemnly swear to you, Harry," he continued firmly, "I shall never call you those words your relatives used as they didn't. You'll never hear them again."

Harry's eyes were large and rather disbelieving, but that didn't matter. In time, when Sirius proved himself trustworthy, he'd believe how sincere he was. Sirius bumped Harry's arm lightly with his and began walking again.

"I think I need to find you a few good nicknames," he suggested. "Maybe 'pup' or 'kid' or . . ."

Harry was smiling now, a broad smile that he couldn't seem to help, and Sirius grinned. One more wound beginning to heal.

Sirius might still have nightmares of going back to Azkaban; he might be alone without Mum or Dad or his brother alive in this world. But he had Harry, and Harry had him, and neither of them had anyone else, and it was enough for them to have each other.

(And he promised himself, as he continued up the hill with his beloved godson by his side, that he would heal Harry as the Potters had once healed him.)

* * *

At thirty-three, Harry Potter brought a wounded girl home.

He was married now, to Gabrielle Potter nee Delacour; he still lived in France, which had become a home to him once he learned to speak the language fluently, with Gabrielle and their little girl Lily and Sirius. Gabrielle had just discovered she was pregnant with their second child, and she and Harry could not have been more pleased. Harry was content and happy these days; he had no one chasing him anymore since the defeat of Voldemort years ago, and he had his wife, the man who had become his father, and his children around him. He taught in a magical primary school in France and enjoyed it very much.

Sirius was out this particular evening with Lily, who called him Grandfather. Harry had never really called him Dad, because that name belonged to James Potter and Sirius kept his memory (and Lily's) vividly alive, but a father was what Sirius had been to Harry. A father, friend, and older brother combined.

Gabrielle was taking a nap, as her new pregnancy was tuckering her out, and Harry ducked out of the house to go for a short walk. There was a seven-year-old girl in the neighborhood that he and Sirius were worried about. Ever since their childhoods, they were both sensitive toward children who might be unhappy in their homes, and they were trying to keep an eye on this girl and see if they needed to confirm their suspicions and rescue her.

That evening, on his walk, Harry found the girl sitting on the curb, a small bag of things beside her and tears streaming down her cheeks. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him her father had struck her and she was running away from him.

Remembering himself, and Sirius, Harry took her home with him.

Gabrielle was wide-eyed when she found what he had done, but accepting. She had been Harry's wife long enough to know his past, to know that the wounds of his childhood had healed but that the faint scars they left behind would always make him sensitive to other children who might be like him. In spite of her pregnancy, she agreed that they would take the girl in and make her their own.

"I knew there was a reason I married you," Harry said jubilantly as he kissed her.

And as he drew back from the kiss, he winked over her head at Sirius, who was watching him proudly from the doorway.

(They understood wounds, and healing, the two of them. They would heal this girl as they themselves had been healed.)


End file.
